CHAPTER 1: THE FAUX-MESSIAH
You’ll be sitting your somewhere minding your own business and all of a sudden someone decides that you’re in need of saving. This has been the story of the African continent—and much of the Global South. Right from the imperialism-fuelled tyranny of the 15th–20th century that the West subjected this region to, to the ensuing neo-imperialism-tainted multilateral regime of the late-20th to the present 21st century that we—for global peace and security—have agreed to be subjected to, there has been an unyielding, underlying hypocrisy of salvation.
In 1899, Rudyard Kipling dubbed it an outright duty—’the White man’s burden’—a duty incumbent on this self-proclaimed ‘superior race’ to undertake upon the entire world—the Global South to boot—a saving mission, a civilising mission… to tame the ‘savage’, to “wage the savage wars of peace”, to quite literally…
“Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.”
“Half devil and half child”—brothers and sisters, your ancestors and mine. So, rudely proclaimed by Rudyard and the pre-21st century Western society as the yardstick of humanity, the Caucasian set forth all across the globe undertaking a gruesome, barbaric, totalitarian regime never before witnessed, purporting to be spreading the altruistic gifts of peace, humanity, God, and all that jazz.
Cecil Rhodes, he didn’t have time for such subtleness and underhandedness for he, in 1895, is recorded to have proclaimed to his fellow imperialists:
“I was in the East End of London (a working-class quarter) yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread! bread!’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism…. My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide
new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread-and-butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.”
So, imperialism it was for the West! A ‘civilising mission’, a ‘manifest destiny’—as though the earth in its entirety was promised to them, placed in their care, millennia upon millennia ago. Blatant imperialism shrouded in altruism—violence in benevolence.
From 1901 to the year of Kwame Nkrumah’s birth, Theodore Roosevelt, like the ancestors coming before him, made it a mission of his presidency to whitewash America’s self-serving expansionist agenda as a moral and civilising duty. Expanding on his forebear, James Monroe’s policy of intervention—the Monroe Doctrine—Roosevelt undertook to position the USA as an “international police power”, notably in Latin America, purportedly tasked with securing for the region, stability (sociopolitical and economic), protecting this region from their own selves (by ensuring the promotion of human rights and democracy), and shielding them from European intervention. Of course, this was ultimately a big ruse—very much on brand with the Euro-American approach. For he is known to have very explicitly expressed that “self-government is not a right which can be granted to all people indiscriminately”; and that “some peoples are not yet fit for freedom”; and that “it is to the ultimate benefit of a backward people that they should be brought under the control of a strong and civilised power.”
A great admirer of the British Empire, Roosevelt went on to oversee the suspension and denial of equal sovereignty for nations in the Global South, exercising imperialistic domination (economic and socio-political), and sometimes cultural eradications in Latin America (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua), Asia, and Africa.
Winston Churchill, the so-called ‘defender of civilisation’, while purporting to be fighting against global fascism—as then advanced by the Nazis—helped mask and advance a fascist regime of his nation’s own. The British Empire which was still deeply steeped in morbid imperialism, to him, was in fact, a ‘force of good’. A staunch opponent to India’s fight for independence, Churchill defended his nation’s imperialist cause, hiding under this same age-old ruse of ‘salvation’, insisting that the colonialist tyranny imposed by his country on the nation of India was, in fact, for their own good—it was to save the Indians from their own selves, to teach them civility, the promotion and protection of human rights and democracy. “The idea that Indians could run their own affairs is not only absurd but dangerous,” he declared proudly. “The British Empire has been a means of spreading knowledge, justice, liberty and progress to many parts of the world.” He claimed on the one hand, while stripping this veil of faux-altruism in a heartbeat, proclaiming regarding the British colonies, “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes… It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases… but gases that cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror.”
At the height of the Cold War, this continent of ours and much of the Global South could still find no peace or shield from the West’s faux-altruistic charge. This time around, ‘communism’ was the buzzword. Saving the free world from the East’s communist scourge, and putting in its place, the principles of human rights, democracy, peace and equality was the West’s banner during this era.
Under Harry Truman during the 1940s to ‘50s, a whole lot of ‘saving’ was undertaken—this faux-saving that in reality involved the arming, funding, installing, and maintenance of authoritarian regimes, the strengthening of internal oppressions, the suppression of national political oppositions, the jailing and outright killings of political opponents, the manipulation of elections, from nations within Africa to the Middle East, through to Asia.
Things were no different under Kennedy in the early 1960s—at least not the underlying ambition of neo-imperialism. Pursuing this anti-communism agenda, and using seemingly benevolent acts such as development aid as a ruse, and purporting to be advancing the cause of democracy and delivering nations from the scourge of human rights violations typical of communism, the US continued to advance their own desired objects of hegemony, homogenisation, and economic expansion. “Foreign aid is a method by which the United States maintains a position of influence and leadership in the world.” That is John F. Kennedy speaking.
But those days are behind us…
But those days are far behind us—some Western sympathisers would say. The periods following the Global South’s independences have been smooth sailing. Independence secured for the continent of Africa and the rest of the Global South, true and absolute liberation—socio-political and economic. The era when the West fancied themselves some sort of global Messiah—the saviour, teacher, and preacher, charged with bringing the entire world to order, teaching them values of humanity, peace, the respect for human rights, democracy, etc., while masking a selfish agenda of imperialism are indeed all behind us!
But shouting this out doesn’t make it true, does it? This is because, in actuality, the decolonisation movement and ensuing independence attained by Africa and the rest of the Global South post-WWII has done little to rid the world of this scourge of the pseudo-Messiah typical of the West.
Tony Blair, for instance, in the late 1990s to early 2000s, informed the world that his country’s infamous alliance with the US in its intervention and invasion of Kosovo and Iraq without the UN Security Council’s explicit authorisation was a “just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values”; and that the removal of Saddam Hussein was not “a war of aggression” but rather, it was a “war of liberation.”
His contemporary, George W. Bush, remains a modern shining example of this blatant hypocrisy. After running through many baseless excuses, the Bush government was to ultimately frame its Iraq and Afghanistan invasions as a fight for the liberation of the oppressed, the spreading of democracy and freedoms, while undertaking the not-so covert activities of securing the perpetuation of the American aims of homogenisation, hegemony, and economic expansion. “The advance of human freedom—the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time—now depends on us,” he informed Americans in a televised address.
Ladies and gentlemen, what level of delusion and conceitedness must a person attain to be able to blatantly make such twisted proclamations…? Especially when in the entire history of their nations they, as a people, have proven themselves to be the world’s quintessential human rights violator. How does an entire race and nation of people arrive at this level of delusion? But here the world is, constantly forced to sit through these lectures—these displays of self-importance and narcissism.
Someone please call Obama to the front of the congregation… Because not even a person of African descent could resist overseeing this age-old Western imperialistic agenda. And at the receiving end of this round of Western-imperialism-masking-as-altruism was notably, Libya—Muammar Gaddafi. Although arguably one of the least brazen American leaders to do it, one cannot still help but clearly trace the imperialist desire to eliminate all ‘stumbling blocks’ to Western hegemony guised under humanitarianism in this case of the Obama-led NATO invasion of Libya and assassination of Gaddafi.
Joe Biden, a lifelong politician gifted in the American strategy of throwing stones and hiding one’s hands, had his own fair share of this trend. Infamously, he continued in the footsteps of his forebears by launching a finger-pointing regime against Russia every chance he got, deservingly so in the case of the war on Ukraine, yet, like his forebears, continued to finance and support Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Palestine—a people who had decades prior been stripped of their sovereignty through the mechanisms of this very same West. While preaching human rights and equality as an indictment on Russia, he continued to actively fund Israel’s war and genocide against the Middle Eastern ‘nation’ of Palestine.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, he needs no introduction: Donald John Trump. If people like Biden throw stones and hide their hands, we have here, a person like Trump who throws these same stones and not only shows his hands—but his mouth too. Trump is an interesting one—because while having an isolationist inclination, he is still affected by these same imperialistic propensities of his many predecessors. But unlike his predecessors, Trump is not so easily predisposed to the hypocritical pageantry of ‘we are here to save the world’—not so much. To him, America is here to take, to win, to prevail grandly—by all means possible. One is almost inclined to respect this blatantness—a breath of fresh air almost. But even he has his moments of this pseudo-saviour syndrome. As we speak, he is launching a series of gruesome, illegal strikes against purported Venezuelan drug vessels in the Pacific Ocean, claiming it to be for ‘national security’ and the challenging of an authoritarian regime. But according to his Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, this is a blatant campaign towards a regime change in the oil-rich nation of Venezuela.
His recent interest in Nigeria, and the ‘saving’ of the nation’s Christians as he purports, has this same subtle oil-tainted stench that we have come to identify many of the USA’s global interventions with—from Iraq to Iran, Afghanistan, Kuwait, to Libya. The list is long.
Diagnosis
The conclusion of the matter is that altruism—coming in the form of socio-political tools such as the so-called protection of human rights, democracy, peace and security, etc.—has been and continues to be used by the West as a ruse to ensure the subordination of the Global South and the perpetuation of their imperialistic reign. Thus, for the continent of Africa and the rest of the Global South to truly attain liberation and equality, they must reclaim their socio-political destinies—notably when it comes to such matters like the promotion and protection of human rights, peace and security, etc.
CHAPTER 2: REGIONAL SALVATION
Reclaiming our destinies when it comes to the matter of human rights and the likes of them is an act of decolonisation—an act of true liberation. That is why continental and regional systems and institutions such as the African Union, ECOWAS, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), etc., are enormously important. Because, admittedly, the continent of Africa and the Global South in general have had their own flaws when it comes to this matter—our records on these values, e.g. the protection of human rights, the promotion of peace and security, etc., haven’t been impeccable. Of course, the extent of our breach of these rights has not been to the level of the West—but we have not been perfect. Hence the need for such cross-national, communal safeguarding.
Because after all, it is said that “the person cutting the path [oftentimes] doesn’t know that it is crooked.” Or in this case, these breachers of human rights within the various countries are often aware of the fault in their acts. However, seeking their own selfish interests instead of that of the collective, they fail to do the right thing. Banding together and watching each other’s backs and paths in this human rights protection journey is the only way to safeguard against the destructive and oftentimes divisive regimes of salvation launched against us by the West, disguising as a saving and civilising mission.
In place of these Western and oftentimes politically-charged UN Security Council interventions, we, the people of the Global South, must erect highly functioning, formidable foundations and systems of regional complementarity—with these regional institutions of ours taking charge and quelling these cases of national human rights abuses with reconstructive and reformative care—freezing out the self-serving, imperialistic ‘interventions’ of the West.
Because the devil finds work for the idle hands, you know. The West is out here sniffing out for ‘human rights abuses’ to hide behind. So, we better rise and do these ‘safeguarding’ ourselves.
Let no nation of the Global South think themselves ‘too good a student’ for the West’s salvation—you are never too good for the West to come running… Ghana, for you, the West will easily come running—Nkrumah found out the hard way. All you need are some documented cases of human rights abuses here and there. With all your gold, diamonds, oil, lithium, the long list of natural resources you like rattling every chance you get—the West, they’ll come running… to “save you”… And there’ll be no one to save you—and history has shown that not even the UN can fully do so.
So then, truly and diligently, let the Global South erect their own formidable systems of altruism—of human rights protection, the promotion of peace and security, and the like. Who knows, we may just be able to build such robust systems and formidable fronts that we end up repaying the West in kind—deploying our own versions of saving and civilising missions, this time around, with us as the teachers and the West, the students… with us constantly showing these Western nations ‘the right way’, benevolently blessing them with our gifts of human rights promotion and protection, peace and security, and the safeguarding of democracy, Who knows…
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Yao Afra Yao
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